A Harvest alternative built for agency profit
Harvest tells you where the hours went. VERA tells you whether those hours made money, while there's still time to change the outcome. It costs one monthly price set by your agency's revenue, so hiring someone never raises your bill, and it brings your Harvest history with it, so you judge it on your own projects.
Switching takes an afternoon
- Connect Harvest. An owner enters a Harvest personal access token and account ID in Settings → Import. VERA reads your data once and doesn't keep the token. Use a Harvest Administrator's token: anyone else's token sees only what their own Harvest role can see, and the import would be incomplete.
- Review the suggestions. VERA proposes what each active Harvest project becomes (a retainer, hourly, fixed price, pro bono or internal) and lists anything it couldn't decide.
- Check a dry run. You see every project's hours before anything is written, so you can match them against Harvest.
- Import. Projects, clients, people, cost rates and every time entry come across in the background. A retainer's history becomes a finished fixed-price project priced at what Harvest invoiced, and its current period starts fresh.
- Keep both running for a while. Until you mark the switch finished, VERA can bring in time recorded in Harvest since the last import.
Harvest and VERA, side by side
Harvest is a good time tracker. If you're shopping around, it is usually for one of three reasons: the per-seat bill grows every time you hire, the reports you need are on a higher plan, or you need to know whether a project is making money while there's still time to act.
What a small agency pays
In 2026 Harvest moved paid accounts to per-seat pricing plus a usage fee, and renewals arrived at about ten times the old bill. One seven-person business went from $69 to $821.50 a month.* VERA charges one monthly price set by your revenue, so a small agency pays less for VERA than for Harvest.
An agency of about 6 people, $750k a year
| Harvest | |
|---|---|
| 6 Enterprise seats × $17.50 | $105 |
| Usage fee ("Unlimited") | $599 |
| VERA | |
| Revenue band: $500k – $1M | $399 |
| Seats, projects, clients, invoices | Included |
VERA costs $3,660 a year less than Harvest.
The table below compares the two products feature by feature. Harvest's column is taken from the comparison table on Harvest's pricing page, read on October 4, 2026; check there for their current terms. A dash means the feature isn't listed on that page.
How you pay
| Harvest | VERA | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per seat, per month | One price per month, set by annual revenue |
| Plans | Free (1 seat, 2 projects), Teams, Enterprise, Enterprise Plus | One plan with everything |
| Price | Teams $9–$11 per seat per month; Enterprise $14–$17.50 per seat per month (the lower figure billed annually) | $99–$1,999 per month by revenue band |
| Hiring someone | Adds a seat | Changes nothing |
| More projects, clients, invoices | Billed on usage as your team grows | Unlimited, included |
| Resource planning | Harvest Forecast, $5–$6.25 per person per month extra | Included |
| Knowing the bill in advance | Usage rates aren't published | Fixed for 12 months, with 90 days' notice of any change |
Where VERA goes further
| Feature | Harvest | VERA |
|---|---|---|
| Profitability by client, project and team | Enterprise only | Included |
| Timesheet approval before billing | Enterprise only | Included, for time-and-materials work |
| Audit trail of every entry and edit | Enterprise only | Included |
| Billable and cost rates per person | Teams and up | Included, with the full rate history |
| Team capacity and utilization | Teams and up | Included, week by week, with a capacity heatmap |
| Revenue recognized as work happens | — | Every entry updates revenue, cost and margin |
| Retainers run as periods, each with its own budget | — | Included, with renewal reminders |
| Labor efficiency ratio against your own target | — | Included, by project, client, discipline and PM |
| Monthly P&L with contribution margin | — | Included |
| Revenue and cost forecast | — | Included, with what-if scenarios for open proposals |
| A morning briefing for every person | — | Included, by Slack or email |
| Advice on what each project needs next | — | Included |
| Fixed-fee vendor costs counted correctly | — | Included |
| Managers see project health, never anyone's pay | — | Enforced by role |
| Proposals costed and checked against capacity before you sign | Project estimates on every plan | Included, and a won proposal becomes the project |
Where Harvest goes further
VERA doesn't try to do everything Harvest does. If you rely on any of these, keep the tool you use for it today.
| Feature | Harvest | VERA |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | Every plan | No. VERA shows what each project earned and was scheduled to bill; your accounting tool sends the invoice. |
| Expense tracking | Every plan | No |
| One-click timers, desktop and mobile apps | Every plan | No timer. Time is entered in seconds in the web console, which works on a phone, or by Slack message. |
| QuickBooks, Xero and Stripe integrations | Teams and up | No |
| Custom report builder | Up to 4 reports, unlimited on Enterprise | No builder. A fixed set of reports, plus CSV export of every entry. |
| SAML single sign-on | Enterprise only | No. Sign in with Google. |
| Require a note on every entry | Enterprise only | No |
| 50+ integrations | Every plan | Slack only |
Try it on your own numbers
Your first month is free, with no card. We bring your Harvest history over, so you see your own projects' margin in VERA before you pay anything. See pricing →
Notes
* How the comparison is worked out:
- Harvest is the renewal Cumulus Vision published for a six-seat consultancy: Enterprise seats at $17.50 a month each, plus a flat $599 a month "Unlimited" usage fee. Harvest's other billing option charges by projects, clients, tasks and invoicing instead; for that firm it came to about the same. Harvest doesn't publish its usage rates, so your bill may differ, and the price shown when you sign up doesn't include them. Forecast, Harvest's separate capacity planning tool, isn't included.
- VERA is the Pricing page's price for your revenue band. Every seat, project, client and invoice is included, and there is no usage fee.
- Headcount is your revenue divided by revenue per person, rounded to the nearest person, with one Harvest seat per person.
- Both are billed monthly.